


Where You Go, I Will Follow

by atlas_white



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 07:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16718701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atlas_white/pseuds/atlas_white
Summary: Eiffel knew better than to steal from Goddard, but that didn't stop him. It never stopped him. And now it seemed that retribution was about to catch up to him. Heiffel AU.





	Where You Go, I Will Follow

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short, bittersweet AU in which they both worked in Goddard's laboratories, no one went to space, and Eiffel stole a cute little test subject named Anne.

 

   Breathless, Eiffel looked back over his shoulder. He could feel the heat of the other man, scorching in contrast to the cold air around them, a sun en miniature in this barren nightmare of a winter. Yet the sight that greeted him first was that of the gun, and the second was an expression of fixed concentration darkened by frustration.

   Eiffel did not raise his hands, but put them in his pockets.

   "Hey, Doc," he said, casual to a fault, watching the words leave his mouth in twin clouds. It made him feel like he was breathing fire, a cauldron in his belly.

   "Hello, Mister Eiffel," came the voice of the man behind him, thick with a Russian accent as cold as the snow under their feet, as cold as the gunman's pale, pale blue eyes. Like a specter of death, dressed appropriately in hooded cloak.

   "You gonna kill me this time, Hilbert?" Eiffel asked.

   "You knew better than to steal from Goddard," Hilbert replied, his voice low and rough. It was a familiar gruffness; it suited him well. "Vhatever made you think you could get avay vith it?"

   Eiffel shrugged. "I didn't really. I just couldn't stand by and let them hurt a little girl, that's all."

   "That altruism of yours is your undoing," Hilbert scoffed. "Gets in the vay of science, in the vay of yourself. You are an idiot."

   "I know," Eiffel said simply, looking away from Hilbert, up towards the silver sky overhead. It was really very beautiful, the kind of sky that only exists in winter. Patches of darker grey the only interruption from the metallic shine, sprinkling tiny flakes of snow to fall lazily on the world below. "It's OK. I'm not angry."

   Hilbert grunted. The gun pressed harder into Eiffel's back, vengeful and harsh.

   "No, but I am. You do this stupid thing, you turn your back on me."

   "That's not what I was doing and you know it," Eiffel answered, a little offended at the insinuation and yet maintaining his calm to almost an absurd degree. He sighed. "I'd never turn my back on you."

   Hilbert scoffed, and it sounded like a laugh. Or maybe it was a laugh that sounded like a scoff. "Then how has my _gun_ found it?"

   "You came up from behind!" Eiffel protested, and forced himself to chuckle as the normalcy of the moment came and went. The calm of him, so much like the snow on the ground he would soon be beneath, was growing ever gradually more difficult to hold up, melting second to second. He didn't want to die (who the hell did?), he just... had kind of accepted it, at this point. And, hey, at least this wasn't the worst way he could make his grand exit. It would be fast. It would be done by someone he trusted. "Hey, can I look at you before we do this? I kinda want to see you before, well, you know."

   Hilbert gave a low growl that rose up from his chest. Eiffel loved that growl and all its many meanings. It was thoughtful now. It had been jealous in the past, contemplative, fervent; a sound as communicative as word, as familiar when they'd been in the lab together as when they'd shared a bed.

   "Fine," Hilbert said, a bark of a word. The gun moved back just enough for Hilbert to turn Eiffel around to face him.

   There was a lot of emotion that passed between them, a lot of thought, a lot of history compacted into something like five hundred days. There had been room enough to see empires rise and fall. Their echoes burned in Eiffel's eyes and lingered in ashes in Hilbert's.

   A silence hung between the two men now, the cold unfelt, unnoticed, the snow devouring all sound. Eiffel licked his dry, cracked lips. Hilbert only watched.

   "Alright," Eiffel whispered at last.

   "Alright?" Hilbert repeated.

   "Time's up, right?" Eiffel answered with a nod and a crooked half-smile, showing that snaggletooth of his with misplaced pride. He'd never done one thing right in his life, all except for saving that little girl.

   "Should I even bother to ask you vhere you put her?" Hilbert knew the answer before he began the question, and Eiffel was shaking his head before he finished it.

   "Nah. Just, she's in good hands." The cold was beginning to seep into Eiffel's bones now, and at length he was taking notice. Death had never been so real to him before. The barrel of a gun in his sternum reminded him that it had always been right by his side.  
Hilbert replied with that growl of his again, the one that meant so much and so many things. Eiffel drew one of his hands out of his pockets and he watched it happen. The other man was much larger than the scientist, but there was nothing he could do that a gun couldn't put a fast stop to.

   "Hey, Doc? One last thing." Eiffel started, his voice so soft that the clouds that lingered between them were only wisps.

   "Vhat?" Hilbert demanded. He had his finger on the trigger. He moved the gun from Eiffel's sternum to his chest, touching the tip where he knew with scientific precision Eiffel's heart was, beating fast; healthy and not yet ready to stop beating. There was a bleak poetry to the target that Hilbert wasn't ready to face, but which was under his finger now. It was trembling. So was he.

   Eiffel took a breath. One last thing.

_"I love you."_

   Hilbert's eyes widened slightly, and he looked wounded, the words like bullets (too apt a metaphor). He drew himself up and he made his choice, and he knew he would regret it no matter which path he took, knew too that there was no escaping what burden had been placed upon him despite that he was only a scientist. Yet, so long as that heart beat, so hard Hilbert could feel it through the steel of his gun, it wasn't too late to walk away.

   He had to walk away.

   "And I... love you," Hilbert replied, as Eiffel's daring hand touched his face.


End file.
